The first Firefox update I've really disliked.

[Christian Klippel]

.... Suggestion: don't leave it open for weeks.

How is your copy of Firefox set to act on start up? See Preferences > General. I have "Show my windows and tabs from last time." That way I can close Firefox and restart it without losing my windows and tabs.

Yes, it restores windows and tabs on restart [ETA: Which, as mentioned, i sometimes have to do to clean up the memory-mess that FF causes]. However, that's simply besides the point. It should free the memory on it's own. Telling people to not have the program open for whatever long time period is like telling someone who's car steering jams when steering to the right "well, then only drive straight or do left turns" instead of having the steering fixed.

This reminds me of those silly auto-save functions that popped up in programs several years ago. Programs that used to crash frequently. People complained about loss of data when it crashed, naturally. So instead of fixing the problem (random program crashing) they added a fix for the symptom (loss of data) by adding auto-save.

I leave my electronics CAD package open for the same amount of time. Same for other EDA programs, as well as my PDF reader which sometimes has over 20 documents open. Almost all of these programs are only closed & restarted once in a while, when i get some library or kernel updates that require a reboot. None of them slowly eats up the memory over time. Why can't FF behave the same?

Greetings,

Chris

 

[Blue Mountain]

Thanks for the update. I agree that Firefox is a memory hog and could probably do better. Interestingly, in preparing this post I typed "about:memory" into a new tab and say an entry titled "Free memory" with three buttons (mouse over the buttons to see the descriptions):
GC: Do a global garbage collection
CC: Do a cycle collection
Minimize memory usage: Send three "heap-minimize" notifications in a row. Each notification triggers a global collection followed by a cycle collection, and causes the process to reduce memory usage in other ways, e.g. by flushing various caches.

That might do what you're looking for without having to shut down Firefox. But it's a kludge.

I winder if there are settings in about:config that one can use to tweak Firefox's memory usage? (No time to investigate right now.)

 

[Christian Klippel]

Thanks for the update. I agree that Firefox is a memory hog and could probably do better. Interestingly, in preparing this post I typed "about:memory" into a new tab and say an entry titled "Free memory" with three buttons (mouse over the buttons to see the descriptions):
GC: Do a global garbage collection
CC: Do a cycle collection
Minimize memory usage: Send three "heap-minimize" notifications in a row. Each notification triggers a global collection followed by a cycle collection, and causes the process to reduce memory usage in other ways, e.g. by flushing various caches.

That might do what you're looking for without having to shut down Firefox. But it's a kludge.

Yea, i know about that. While it helps somewhat, it still doesn't free as much as it imho should. And of course these options also beg a question: They seem to be somewhat aware of the problem and added some stuff to manually do a little bit about it. Why, then, did they not do this as an automated process? Why not have it, after i close a tab or window, clean up the memory usage automatically for those contexts? Or have it clean up every X hours?

I winder if there are settings in about:config that one can use to tweak Firefox's memory usage? (No time to investigate right now.)

No idea. Personally i'm not a big fan of about:config anyways. I consider it mostly one of the bling-bling things that do little but bloating up the code. While there are very likely some useful options in there, i think it would be more helpful to put the useful ones into some sort of "enable expert options" in the general config dialogue, and have the vast remainder put into the code statically. After all, there _is_ a difference between allocating a variable in ram and accessing it, and having a const compiled into the code. What with caching and all that... Plus, if someone is really that desparate to fiddle with these options, and given that FF is open-source, there is always the option to change those const's and recompile, if really needed.

But then i guess this is just a matter of taste/opinion. Others may find it very useful. More power to them

Greetings,

Chris

 

[Christian Klippel]

Forgot to add: There is also Firefox OS. If they really want to have FF as an OS also, on one hand that may explain the massive about:config stuff. But also means that they better improve on the memory management. Because as an OS, for smartphones for example, there really is no reason to have it shut down periodically.

Maybe there is some kind of "cross pollution" going on here. FF as a browser getting more and more bloated because of the branch of FF as an OS. If that is the case then i would argue that they better split it up more deeply. No problem with re-using code or such, but let's face it, a browser has a different set of requirements and usage than a OS has.

Greetings,

Chris

 

[Olowkow]

A couple of add-ons that I find useful.

Change the font size as big or small as wanted:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/theme-font-size-changer/

This one gets rid of the annoying adds that precede most videos on news sites. Once in a while the ad gets through, but 99% are gone.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/

 

[quadraginta]

<snip>

This reminds me of those silly auto-save functions that popped up in programs several years ago. Programs that used to crash frequently. People complained about loss of data when it crashed, naturally. So instead of fixing the problem (random program crashing) they added a fix for the symptom (loss of data) by adding auto-save.

<snip>

Auto-save has been around a whole lot longer than "several years", and I doubt that "random program crashing" was even very high on the list of reasons that it was added to software.

It isn't very high on the list of why people loose data. Shutting down a program or turning off the computer without saving would rank much higher. Random power outages probably would as well.

Once I was working on a program for a class in BASIC. This was GW-BASIC that shipped with DOS back in the very early 80s, complete with line numbers and everything, but lacking an auto-save feature.

For some reason the folks who designed the computer "lab" (a room full of tables with several PCs each all side by side) saw no problem with plugging the machines into floor outlets directly beneath the tables.

After a couple hours of trying to debug the program I was working on (it was probably more ambitious than my skill level had any business attempting) I was nearly done when the person next to me managed to kick the plug to my computer out of the floor outlet.

At that moment I would have been very grateful for a silly auto-save function, since in my burst of creative intensity I had neglected to save the work on my own.

Not long after that a silly auto-save function was added to the MS BASIC interpreter. I thought it was a great idea. Oddly enough, I didn't think it was because of random program crashing, although I guess a power failure could be described that way.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

No idea. Personally i'm not a big fan of about:config anyways. I consider it mostly one of the bling-bling things that do little but bloating up the code. While there are very likely some useful options in there, i think it would be more helpful to put the useful ones into some sort of "enable expert options" in the general config dialogue, and have the vast remainder put into the code statically. After all, there _is_ a difference between allocating a variable in ram and accessing it, and having a const compiled into the code. What with caching and all that... Plus, if someone is really that desparate to fiddle with these options, and given that FF is open-source, there is always the option to change those const's and recompile, if really needed.

But then i guess this is just a matter of taste/opinion. Others may find it very useful. More power to them

One of the things I like about Firefox is about:config. I think it's great that it's that customisable and one of the complaints people have about the latest update is that the about:config option to put tabs on the bottom has been removed. As for the open-source aspect, I don't know how to code, but I do know how to look up specific problems/options on the internet and follow the instructions about what to change in about:config.