For me, promises of Firefox memory management have always been vaporware - like flying cars, cold fusion and political reform.
I'm running a Nightly x64 that seems to occupy 50mb of memory, for every 5mb of page data.
I realize bookmarks and add-ons bring their own memory burdens, but it seems those burdens are multiplied by every tab I have open.
Mozilla says
they've been addressing (pun) the memory issues in their browser.
As I watch FFx use 1.2g of memory to maintain 3 tabs, I wonder how true that is.
Apparently, my add-ons are to blame.
Or so indicates Mozilla, who has cobbled together a new patch that targets the memory leaks that originate from add-ons.
said by PCW :"Leaky add-ons are a big problem," began the blog post on Monday from Mozilla developer Nicholas Nethercote.
A promising new patch, in fact, has shown great potential in addressing what Nethercote calls "chrome-to-content" leaks.
"In theory it would prevent almost all add-ons' zombie compartments, which constitute the majority of leaks from add-ons," Nethercote explained. "And in practice, it appears to be working splendidly."
In fact, tests of the new patch so far have found a reduction in memory consumption of as much as 400 percent, Nethercote said.
The result--regardless of hardware capabilities--can be much faster browser speeds, he added.
"Even on high-end machines with lots of RAM, leaks can greatly hurt browser performance," Nethercote explained.
Of course, it's a rare patch that fixes any problem in one fell swoop without any side-effects, and this latest one is no exception.
Turns out, glitches occur in add-ons built with older versions of the add-on SDK, Nethercote reported.
"Firefox 15 is scheduled for release on August 28th," he concluded. "We need as many affected add-ons to be rebuilt with the latest SDK before that date to minimize potential problems."
The MemShrink blog post
is here.
My memory problems in FFx15 are no better than they were with FFx3.
It's hard for me to believe a fix is on the way.