

Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory  - ukdm
http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/firefox-7-will-use-up-to-50-less-memory-20110811/

======
mgkimsal
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 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. Then endless discussion about "how can you even _function_ having more
than 2 tabs open? I always close all mine because of some cognition study from
1974 which I read in my one open tab, then closed it".

Now many of those same people will be spouting how great FF is because they've
cut memory usage so much (and maybe how they'll venture in to the brave new
world of 3-tabs-at-a-time).

End of the day, this is just how computer stuff goes - deny there's a problem,
fix it, then promote how great your fix is. Just gets a bit tiresome.

Oh, and yes, I set up a bunch of strawmen up there. I love the smell of them
burning in the morning.

~~~
jmillikin

      > 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 Firefox on overnight with three tabs open, and now it's using 3.1
GiB of memory. This browser is terrible! Yes, I do have dozens of low-quality
extensions installed, so?"

2\. "I started Firefox, and already it's using over 300 MiB! That's insane!
Why would a web browser _ever_ use that much? I'm switching to Chrome, it only
uses 100 MiB. What do you mean, 'multiple processes'?"

There may in fact be genuine issues buried somewhere in the discussion, but
they're hard to discern against the general background noise.

    
    
      > Then endless discussion about "how can you even function
      > having more than 2 tabs open? I always close all mine
      > because of some cognition study from 1974 which I read in
      > my one open tab, then closed it".
    

You're getting confused between Firefox and Chrome. Firefox has always been
the browser of choice for the "tons of tabs" crowd, because Chrome's process-
per-tab model breaks down when there's more than a few dozen open.

For example, I have just over 70 tabs open right now, Firefox has been running
for about a month, and it's at 1.1 GiB resident memory. Chrome becomes very
unhappy under such circumstances (since it uses about ~100 MiB per tab), so
I'm careful to only open a few tabs at a time.

~~~
crikli
> 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?

~~~
kodablah
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...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab)

~~~
Klinky
Vertical tab management is far superior when managing a bunch of tabs. I am
not sure how anyone who has more than a handful of tabs can get by
horizontally, not sure how people can tell tabs apart when only seeing the
favicon & a few characters of the title. What with widescreen displays being
the norm now it just makes sense to do vertical tabs.

~~~
sbierwagen
I use a 1920x1200 monitor rotated 90 degrees. So, while it is _technically_ a
widescreen display, it doesn't quite work like one.

------
sp332
It's not that Firefox is actually using that much memory. It's not even that
it has a memory leak in the usual sense of a broken garbage collector or
something. It all down to memory fragmentation. You can see illustrations of
browser memory fragmentation here: <http://blog.pavlov.net/2007/11/10/memory-
fragmentation/> Firefox switched to jemalloc in 2008, which cut memory usage
to less than half. <http://blog.pavlov.net/2008/03/11/firefox-3-memory-usage/>

~~~
capnrefsmmat
Many of the Firefox 7 fixes that reduced memory usage did not have to do with
fragmentation; there were a number of true memory leaks fixed, and other bugs
where code was allocating more memory than it ever could need.

(For example, I think there was a bug where the find-as-you-type bar could
keep the page in memory forever if it wasn't dismissed.)

~~~
khuey
That's correct, but the big fix people are talking about was a fragmentation
fix.

<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=666058#c31>

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

~~~
trustfundbaby
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.

~~~
dailycavalier
The Aurora channel, which is the code that will soon become Firefox 7, has
some pretty big memory improvements.

Nicholas Nethercote is leading Firefox's memshrink effort and shared the
results so far:
[http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/2011/08/09/firefox-7-is-...](http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/2011/08/09/firefox-7-is-
lean-and-fast-2/)

------
drieddust
I have switched to Firefox 8 nightly 64 bit 2 week and never turned back to
stable release.

Firefox 8 is current state is performing an order of magnitude better than the
current stable release.

They are definitely improving at an escalating pace ever since chrome and
safari started eating into their market share.

------
marckremers
There's something inherently wrong about the headline of this. How did they
get to such a high usage in the first place? They sacrificed performance for
features, and now going back to clean up the mess. Not elegant. This is why
I'm sticking with Chrome.

------
oppositionradio
I left firefox once and for all this week. its too bad, i like what the they
are working with identity built into the browser.

~~~
stanleydrew
Chrome/ChromeOS/Chromium(OS) is working on identity built in to the browser as
well via multiple profiles:

<http://www.chromium.org/user-experience/multi-profiles>

------
callahad
Can anyone explain why the explicit memory metrics apparently regress between
Firefox 7 and Firefox 8?

~~~
capnrefsmmat
A bug in how they were counted in FF7:

<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=673851>

------
sliverstorm
" _up to_ 50% less"? That is a major weasel statement. It could use 1% less
and still meet the "goal".

~~~
starwed
I think you misunderstood -- it's not a goal but a measurement.

The actual statement, if you read the original source[1], is

> _Firefox 7 uses less memory than Firefox 6 (and 5 and 4): often 20% to 30%
> less, and sometimes as much as 50% less._

[1]
[http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/2011/08/09/firefox-7-is-...](http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/2011/08/09/firefox-7-is-
lean-and-fast-2/)

------
u48998
Could someone help identify why Firefox saves and keeps such a ridiculous
number of Cache folders in \\\Application Data\\...\Profiles\\... They're all
0, 1, 2...and then 01, 0A, 0B. I mean, what's the point here?

~~~
mbrubeck
Filesystem performance tends to degrade when you have tens of thousands of
files in a single directory, so programs that manage thousands of files
usually end up dividing them into many subdirectories. It's not just Firefox -
git uses the same strategy, for example.

------
yason
Memory is cheap. High UI latency and cross-browser crashes aren't. Sorry.

~~~
lurker19
Some people run other apps alongside Firefox and some of those apps also want
to provide low UI latency.

------
fedorabbit
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.

~~~
AndyKelley
The problem with using that metric is that the "feel" of a program is directly
related to the UI changes that the version employs. You could change
absolutely nothing bug and feature wise, but do a UI redesign and the new
version would feel like it was updated a whole bunch.

~~~
fedorabbit
What's wrong with subversion system for bug fixes? So, you mean they fixed so
many bugs, improved so many back-end features in Firefox 4, which perfectly
justifies a version jump from 4 to 7? I seem to remember old days Firefox 2 to
Firefox 3 took forever...

~~~
capnrefsmmat
They're not jumping from 4 to 7. 5 has been released; 6 will be released soon;
7 will be released six weeks after that. It's a time-based schedule with a new
version number every six weeks.

Mozilla was sick of defining features for a given version and then delaying
releases for months because of too-ambitious goals, so they switched to a
whatever-is-done-by-the-deadline system. Version numbers aren't particularly
meaningful.

------
grimen
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.

~~~
william42
Well, one thing is that Chrome extensions are much more limited; also, they
only even run when you let them.

~~~
grimen
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.

------
Maro
I'm using Firefox 5.0.1, I just clicked "Check for updates" and it said I'm
up-to-date.

Shouldn't 6 come out first? Isn't it too early to talk about 7?

I think this is bad marketing from Mozilla, they're totally confusing people.

~~~
windsurfer
Firefox 7 isn't even a real release. You'll have to wait for 8. The new
versioning system uses the Fibonacci sequence, so that after 8, the next
"real" release will be 13, and then 21 etc. This is why you're currently stuck
on 5.

~~~
samstokes
Satire much?

------
heelhook
I don't know what everyone is complaining about, whenever I want to open a few
more tabs I just purchase a couple more gigs of ram, problem solved, bunch of
whiners!

~~~
pestaa
There are hundreds of better ways to pack & deliver your sarcasm.

~~~
heelhook
Yeah? For example?

