So Firefox 1.5 is chewing up memory faster than I've ever seen...

[ShotokaN]

I'm at a loss to explain this.

I have a new (2-week-old) 14'' iBook with 1.5 GBs of RAM, and Firefox has somehow managed to eat up 1 GB of that in the past hour.

I turned on Activity Monitor before I began. With all of my normal applications and Firefox open (nothing happening with any of them, just open) about 350 MB was being used.

Then I started using Firefox, browsing through all the webpages that I would normally go through. I discovered that every time I closed an old tab and created a new one, the amount of RAM used would go up. If I closed and opened a new window, then RAM use would go up even further. Opening an image and then closing it caused RAM to go up.

It was like every single action I did only caused Firefox to increase its RAM use. On top of that, I had to play an embedded Quicktime audio file in one page and the browser managed to eat up something like 90% of my CPU continuously for several minutes, beyond even the length of the file.

I eventually managed to get myself up to about 1.37 GB of RAM used, and said screw it. When I finally quit Firefox, I checked Activity Monitor and found my RAM back down to about 400 MB used.

What on earth is going on with this program?

 

[mad jew]

Has it slowed down? Is it sluggish?

 

[ShotokaN]

Firefox hasn't really slowed down, but the rest of OSX is starting to stutter.

I'm starting to think there's some stray extension or something in the program. I've never seen it chew up this much RAM. It shouldn't even be using more than like 100 MB.

Edit: I should point out that in Activity Monitor, the Processes part shows "Firefox" as using 190 MB, but the actual "RAM used" is flying up into 1.4 GB territory. I'm not even using any other programs though, so I know this is Firefox.

 

[mad jew]

I reckon the stray extension idea's a pretty good guess. Take them off, one by one, to see whether it gets better.

 

[Mac_Freak]

I have noticed this problem too. It is the only reason why I am still using safari, well plus its RSS integration.

 

[bousozoku]

I've no problems with Firefox version 1.5 and since I'm using it on perpetually busy systems, I can't imagine that anything is slowing down.

Firefox really isn't taking that much memory, real or otherwise, but I'm only using Adblock and Fasterfox extensions.

"Extensions Gone Wild!"?

 

[ShotokaN]

The only extensions I have are Adblock and Tabbrowser Preferences. Removing both of those didn't fix it and if they did, then Firefox would have about as much functionality as Safari.

I just took a cursory glance over at the Mozilla Forums, and it looks like there's some wacky memory leak issue, so I guess I'll just wait for the programmers to figure it out.

Bousozoku, I kid you not, I am only running iTunes, iChat, Safari, and Firefox, and the lowest amount of RAM used is like 800 MB. This is just really nuts.

 

[dotdotdot]

On Windows there is an option to start Firefox in "Safe Mode." Not Windows OS Safe mode, but a firefox safe mode, where all the plugins and extentions and themes and EVERYTHING is turned off, except for the browser. Its great for pinpointing problems and stuff.

Does OS X Firefox have this?

 

[Apple]

Mozilla used to update firefox everyday right? Do they still do that now because couldn't you just d/l the new update if the developers have recognized the problem and fixed it?

 

[bousozoku]

The only extensions I have are Adblock and Tabbrowser Preferences. Removing both of those didn't fix it and if they did, then Firefox would have about as much functionality as Safari.

I just took a cursory glance over at the Mozilla Forums, and it looks like there's some wacky memory leak issue, so I guess I'll just wait for the programmers to figure it out.

Bousozoku, I kid you not, I am only running iTunes, iChat, Safari, and Firefox, and the lowest amount of RAM used is like 800 MB. This is just really nuts.

I just don't see anything other than typical memory usage. I did some Activity Monitor screen shots. The original I posted had only one tab. You can see by the file names that I had 2, 3, 4, and once again, only 1 tab open, as well as the results.