Firefox 7 now uses much less (20-50%) memory than previous versions

HoNeYBiRD · Sep 28, 2011

Firefox released Firefox 7 yesterday (it's not a biggie as they're releasing a new version in every 6 weeks now), but seems to be a big change this time:

"Firefox 7 now uses much less memory than previous versions: often 20% to 30% less, and sometimes as much as 50% less. This means that Firefox and the websites you use will be snappier, more responsive, and suffer fewer pauses. It also means that Firefox is less likely to crash or abort due to running out of memory. These benefits are most noticeable if you do any of the following:
- keep Firefox open for a long time;
- have many tabs open at once, particularly tabs with many images;
- view web pages with large amounts of text;
- use Firefox on Windows
- use Firefox at the same time as other programs that use lots of memory."

Code:

http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/09/firefox-7-is-lean-and-fast/

Full list of what's new in the latest release:

Code:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/7.0/releasenotes/

Do you experience significant drop in memory usage with the latest version of Firefox?

xboxps3wow · Sep 28, 2011

They finally fixed what I've been hating about firefox since forever!
My firefox is usually open for at least few days and it would use like 1-2gbs of RAM.

phatzilla · Sep 28, 2011

great. now if only they hadnt changed the fucking layout......

SyZygy · Sep 28, 2011

Had always problems with FF, hope this version will solve it..

HoNeYBiRD · Sep 28, 2011

phatzilla said:
great. now if only they hadnt changed the fucking layout......

they hadn't changed it that much this time and you can change most of it back (Tabs on Top etc.)

my FF7 looks like my FF3.5 except the statusbar (there's an Add-on bar now tho), but you can get the statusbar back also with an addon, however i'm not sure if it's compatible with FF7 as of now:

Code:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/status-4-evar/

be careful with installing, because if you don't like it and want to uninstall, it fucks the Add-on bar up a bit

, you need to fix it manually (more info on the addon's page)

HostStage · Sep 28, 2011

Same here, i easily go to 1.5 Gig of RAM and it is very annoying because of the lags and so on.

It seems that the mozilla fundation decided to solve the situation but the main problem remains the addon compatibility accross the new version. For some you have to wait weeks before they become available for the new version.

To me they are killing the browser with such updates. I wish they do THE update instead of tiny ones each weeks.

HostStage · Sep 28, 2011

Okay, i've upgraded from 5 to 7.

So far plugins are working fine except firebug which i have to reinstall.

I am using Nightly Tester Tool which avoids and bypass the plugin compatibility for most of them.

After doing a ccleaner scan between 2 installs, i have just this tab opened and firefox is consuming 158mo of RAM, so not very light.

Let's see what happen if i open many tabs during this day.

For those who doesn't know about, firefox has changed the javascript memomy handling. Before, it allocated blocks of 1mb memory common to all tabs. Once you had filled a block it opened a new block. That was pretty much fine except that once you close a tab, the allocated JS memory didn't empty itself so the memory remained allocated and kept raising.

From now, this dev failure seemed to be fixed with another system i forgot about.

But the epic question remains how is firefox handling flash from now on ?

drcoolj999 · Sep 28, 2011

xboxps3wow said:
They finally fixed what I've been hating about firefox since forever!
My firefox is usually open for at least few days and it would use like 1-2gbs of RAM.

So true, this is one (of many) reasons i stopped using Firefox and now use google chrome. Chrome is so much better and managing memory than firefox.

Once all my seo plugins are working with FF7, ill give it a go.

shadowcat · Sep 28, 2011

If it will not crash then it is surely a must have version but just needed to ask about the add-ons,I mean will they run fine in this new version.
As few weeks ago after updating my Mozilla to a higher version, some of the add-ons failed to. work.

gettinthere · Sep 28, 2011

about time! been a right pain!

NoirHat · Sep 28, 2011

yeah the memory hog thing was pissing me off..
keep same sites open, restart firefox and then uses a fraction of the memory

shadowedsniper · Sep 28, 2011

I've been using their alpha version called Nightly (v9.01a)... Its 10x better than whatever the stable release is but I still find it hanging occasionally and using tons of memory whenever multiple flash tabs are open (like 10+ after about an hour). FF's glory days were over after v3.6 imo

Rubix101 · Sep 28, 2011

It's FireFox, I used to think it was the god of all browsers. But since switching to chrome I just can't go back.

I did initially miss the mass selection of plugins, but now days chrome is catching up on that front anyway.

HoNeYBiRD · Sep 28, 2011

shadowedsniper said:
I've been using their alpha version called Nightly (v9.01a)... Its 10x better than whatever the stable release is but I still find it hanging occasionally and using tons of memory whenever multiple flash tabs are open (like 10+ after about an hour). FF's glory days were over after v3.6 imo

yea, 3.6 was the shit, i just upgraded it to v6 a few days ago and now to v7, i think it's faster now tho, but not using less memory at all, it's using about the same (maybe if you keep 100 tabs open at once, you can realize a drop, but i don't used to keep open that many, around 4-5 most of the times, so i can't notice any change in memory usage)

Subject · Sep 28, 2011

the shit is now using 170,618 kb of memory in my system..lol..
thats around 165 mb of memory.. is this good or bad?
plugin container also using 20,250 kb..

YoungGuns · Sep 28, 2011

Rubix101 said:
It's FireFox, I used to think it was the god of all browsers. But since switching to chrome I just can't go back.

I did initially miss the mass selection of plugins, but now days chrome is catching up on that front anyway.

Yea, I honestly forgot about firefox even though it's still on my desktop.
It'd freeze up and crash waaay to much under even fairly mild use.

I got 50 tabs open in chrome right now...and that's normal for me (not that that's productive)...Pretty fricken stable.

shadowedsniper · Sep 28, 2011

I would love to be able to switch to chrome, but it has no option to add a status bar... I've had alexa, firebug and seoquake down on my FF status bar for years. Not going to change that now.

dowser · Sep 28, 2011

I may go against the grain here, but I despise chrome, and not only because it's from g

I go the route to close all the tabs from time to time and re-open them. I used to keep my comps on 24/7, but recently I shut them down and keep them going only 1 day a week for deep defrag.

beest123 · Sep 28, 2011

N1 Google Chrome
N2 FireFox
N3 Opera
N4 Safari
N5 IE

Great improvement by FF

!

HoNeYBiRD · Sep 28, 2011

Subject said:
the shit is now using 170,618 kb of memory in my system..lol..
thats around 165 mb of memory.. is this good or bad?
plugin container also using 20,250 kb..

it's around normal with 1 tab open, they didn't change a thing again...

Firefox 7 now uses much less (20-50%) memory than previous versions

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