Firefox and RAM
Unlike Derek, I still use Firefox as my primary browser. I tried Safari as my main browser for a couple of weeks after (finally) upgrading to OS X 10.4 not too long ago, but it ultimately just didn’t quite work with me the way I wanted it to. Firefox does.
That’s not to say that Firefox is perfect, though. One of the biggest peeves of mine with regards to Firefox is its memory usage: it often just keeps growing ever so slowly. Of course, this isn’t helped by the fact that I very rarely restart the application (I always have pages open for reference or things I “need to get to” that I don’t want to lose) and I usually have a crazy number of total tabs open. For instance, right at this moment I have 13 Firefox windows open with a grand total of (I’m not kidding) 36 tabs between them. I’m sure that’s pretty excessive for most people, but it’s fairly typical for me after a few days of Firefox running.
So, minimizing the amount of memory that Firefox uses is obviously something I’d be interested in. A Wired.com “monkey bite” led me to this mozillazine entry discussing (both real and not) “memory leaks” in the application. That, in turn, led me to a more useful article by Jesse Ruderman (who I gather is a contributor to Mozilla) on memory leak progress in Firefox (and the trunk builds). Of course, Jesse’s entry itself led me to a detection tool for leaks as well as a general memory usage info thread and reducing memory usage information.
Whew, lots of info. I’m still going through it all (all that stuff accounts for 6 of the 36 tabs, BTW), but so far I’m finding some very interesting and useful information. Anyone else have specific suggestions for reducing the memory usage of Firefox?
Posted Friday February 17, 2006 in by Chris Curtis
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⌘+Q
FWIW, I have about 30-40 tabs open at any given time as well, though generally only split between 3-4 windows.
I haven’t used the G4 build, but I use the G5 version of Firefox, (a.k.a. DeerPark) when I want to use part of that browser family.
I guess after I migrated to Safari after it went 2.0, I didn’t find myself missing any features from Firefox, and I dig its speed. That said, after a number of days, Safari’s memory usage is through the roof as well. *shrug*
By Derek Jones on February 17, 2006 at 07:48pm link