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Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory

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Re: Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory

#71

Post by yid »

DannoHung wrote: post #56
jmillikin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like FF. I use it. But every time there's some comment > about FF memory, we usually see a bunch of people coming > out saying they never see FF memory issues, the OP must be > doing something wrong or have a bad system, they use their > computer non-stop for 4 years without ever even seeing FF > slow down, etc. That's because complaints about large memory use in Firefox fall into two camps, generally: 1. "I left…

Did they make Firefox re-entrant so that a f'd up page in one tab doesn't affect all the other ones and the browser chrome?

Either you're incredibly involved in the Mozilla codebase, or you're misusing the word "re-entrant" [1]. Since you're asking about development status, I'm going to assume the latter.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reentrant_(subroutine)

Re: Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory

#72

Post by jamesgeck0 »

lukeschlather wrote: post #49
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Finally I have two blank desktops that tend to get eaten up by tabs that I use when people come into my office asking questions that I don't know the precise answer to off the top of my head. Why do you keep the tabs open after you've answered their question?

I'm in a remote area with limited Internet - 364 kbps down 128 kbps up shared among 20-30 office workers and over 100 residents. My computer can handle keeping tabs open in case I didn't properly solve the problem before, or if something similar crops up. So, I have a lot of reference materials open on my desk, and I keep them open because finding the page I was on takes a long time, and loading that page takes even…

I've used Firefox under similar conditions.

Some people might not know that it actually includes a feature specifically for this use case. If you start to type in a URL or page name similar to one already open in a tab, the awesomebar dropdown menu lets you jump to the already-opened tab.

Re: Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory

#73

Post by jamesgeck0 »

Udo wrote: post #55
fedorabbit wrote: post #18

This version inflation thing is getting a bit out of hand...I'm using Firefox 5 right now, I don't feel any difference from Firefox 4.

Clearly, they are pulling the old "major version change marketing stunt" to catch up with a perceived lag in version numbers compared to other browsers. You see, apparently people think IE 9 must be vastly superior to FF 4... Personally, I think the time for version numbers should probably be over altogether. At this point I feel it's more productive to just tack a date string onto the thing and be done with it. For…

Did you read Mozilla's version number announcement a few months back? Version numbers aren't being used in marketing material anymore, so the user will rarely see them. The change in the version numbering corresponds to a new rapid release/update cycle. From the user's perspective, there are no versions, there is just Firefox.

Re: Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory

#74

Post by derobert »

hollerith wrote: post #50
huhtenberg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hint: use multiple windows. One window with few tabs is for programming to-reads, second windows - with sites from searching for some item to buy, third - with stock information, etc. This way accumulating 100+ tabs is really not a big deal and it still remains manageable. Until FF crashes or, worse yet, grinds to a halt that is. "We are sorry, it is so embarrasing" it would say on a restart and then get herniated ag…

Yeah, I know, I should take my question to Stack Overflow, but does anyone know how to configure FF to not try to reopen tabs after a crash? (Takes a long time on my old machine.)

Well, Superuser, not Stack Overflow.

Go to about:config and set browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash to false.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.sessionstore.resume_from_c...

Re: Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory

#75

Post by steins »

crikli wrote: post #23
jmillikin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like FF. I use it. But every time there's some comment > about FF memory, we usually see a bunch of people coming > out saying they never see FF memory issues, the OP must be > doing something wrong or have a bad system, they use their > computer non-stop for 4 years without ever even seeing FF > slow down, etc. That's because complaints about large memory use in Firefox fall into two camps, generally: 1. "I left…

> I have just over 70 tabs open... I'm really curious about this as once I get to about 10 tabs my brain starts wanting to close them to get back to something it can manage. This is either because I'm dumb (highly likely) or because you have a different usage style than I (also likely). So if you don't mind elaborating, how do you get to where you have that many tabs open?

I use a firefox treetabs plugin that makes trees of tabs vertically on the left side of the monitor. ive had about 50-60 tabs/window with 3 windows open before, while running firebug. With that many on firefox 3/4 it was crashing if I ran it overnight, but it does seem to be improving now. Hopefully 7 will be a dramatic improvement.

Re: Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory

#76

Post by trustfundbaby »

hack_edu wrote: post #24

Since when has Firefox/Mozilla NOT promised that their next release will manage memory better?

I smirked at the headline when I saw it and I came here to say the same thing ... Every release they promise that firefox will use less memory ... hasn't happened yet AFAIK.

Re: Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory

#77

Post by romey »

hollerith wrote: post #50
huhtenberg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hint: use multiple windows. One window with few tabs is for programming to-reads, second windows - with sites from searching for some item to buy, third - with stock information, etc. This way accumulating 100+ tabs is really not a big deal and it still remains manageable. Until FF crashes or, worse yet, grinds to a halt that is. "We are sorry, it is so embarrasing" it would say on a restart and then get herniated ag…

Yeah, I know, I should take my question to Stack Overflow, but does anyone know how to configure FF to not try to reopen tabs after a crash? (Takes a long time on my old machine.)

you could also try using the session manager add-on. I find it pretty handy for when FF crashes with 20+ tabs open in the HN tree, another 10 or so in whatever google search tree I have open, and some other miscellaneous tabs.

Re: Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory

#78

Post by erikcw »

kodablah wrote: post #39
crikli wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have just over 70 tabs open... I'm really curious about this as once I get to about 10 tabs my brain starts wanting to close them to get back to something it can manage. This is either because I'm dumb (highly likely) or because you have a different usage style than I (also likely). So if you don't mind elaborating, how do you get to where you have that many tabs open?

Tree style tabs[1] have changed my life. There are plenty of times I get near 100 tabs. It automatically opens them as subtabs when ctrl or middle clicked. This is great when browsing source trees online via github, google code, etc. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

I combine "Tree Style Tabs" with the Tab Group[1] feature (added in FF4 I believe) instead of using a separate window for each class of tabs that I'm viewing. Those 2 combined with the "Pin as App Tab" option for Gmail and a couple of my control panels makes for a pretty efficient setup usability wise.

I really would love to see memory efficiency improve. I restarted FF yesterday and I'm already at 2.22 GB. It would be great to be able to set a ceiling on the amount of RAM FF is able to get its greedy little hands on. My iMac has 16GB, and I've seen FF reach half of that before when running a big Flash based web app with a hundred or so other tabs open. My little MacBook Air only has 4GB, so being able to tell FF to grab no more than 1GB or so would be fantastic!

[1] http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/what-are-tab-groups

Re: Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory

#79

Post by grimen »

william42 wrote: post #53
grimen wrote: post #33

Well, even with that it won't be comparable to Chrome I'm afraid. Firefox became very heavy suring the years. And no I don't have a lot of add-ons; I have 2 addons in FF and 15 addons in Chrome and yet Chrome processes suck much less memory even if i run it for days without closing. People switching to Chrome is not just PR, really.

Well, one thing is that Chrome extensions are much more limited; also, they only even run when you let them.

Still, Chrome eats less memory than FF with 1-2 extensions (Firebug - very often disabled, and a FB addon). How can you argue against that? Just accept the fact that FF got issues.

Re: Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory

#80

Post by carussell »

mgkimsal wrote: post #2

I'm reminded of MySQL. "You don't have transaction support" "Sure we do - just handle it in your code" "But I need transactions" "No you don't! That's just overarchitecting!" "No really I do" "Look how fast we are!" ... years later... "Hey look at MySQL - We have transactions! Look how great we are!" etc. I like FF. I use it. But every time there's some comment about FF memory, we usually see a bunch of people coming…

That's interesting.

Because every time I've seen Mozilla developers making note of memory improvements over the last few years, I run into someone claiming that every time "Firefox" and "memory usage" came up prior to whichever is current for the time, the developers steadfastly denied a problem.

It's getting a bit like the mythical proslytizing vegan; I've run into far more people bitching about however many instances of fuss-making by however many hostile vegans than I have of actual hostile vegans. (The count of the latter can be described as "basically none".)

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