I googled this a little bit this morning and all I got what this is a common problem and couldn't find a solution. this is when it was loading, I ended up closing it before it got to the full 700+ it usually gets to.

So I've switched to IE for now and actually like it with IEpro installed it's about the same as firefox without the memory leaks.

Any ideas for fixing FF or should I just stick with IE?

6/25/2008 8:32:24 AM

Stick with IE. Leaking memory is just kind of Firefox's thing.

6/25/2008 8:40:59 AM

How many tabs did you have open?

Also, did you upgrade to Firefox 3.0 yet?

6/25/2008 8:42:44 AM

as the title would suggest... it is firefox 3

one tab open. i had it open a "new session" instead of restoring the old one.

I uninstalled, reinstalled, ran ad-aware (found nothing) and well, fuck it.. I'll just stick with IE.

I've always had the problem of if I use it for days without restarting it it'll end up taking 300-400mb of memory but just restarting it always fixed it. this morning i open it and can't even do anything hardly and then notice it's taking that much memory and can't figure out a solution

dammit i hate going back to MS

6/25/2008 8:48:09 AM

dang that sucks I would hate to have to use IE haha.

What I have found was that firefox takes more than IE with just one tab or very few (though the difference on my machine is very small, ~7MB, not enough considering how much better firefox is outside of memory usage), but once I get above 5 tabs or more firefox actually handles it with less memory than IE.

6/25/2008 8:58:30 AM

the only grief i have with it is it just feels laggy as hell if that's even a word. like everytime i click on something i feel like it takes a few second before anything happens. in IE it was like bam bam bam. this IEPro plugin seems to be helping a lot though and has a few options for help speeding things up

6/25/2008 9:07:40 AM

something must be wrong with your installation

i'm running Firefox 3...I have 3 tabs open and it's using 86MB. I would try a reinstall. I have never seen anything close to what you're describing with my own usage of firefox on 4 different PCs

6/25/2008 9:16:16 AM

yeah, mine has been fine too. you got any extensions installed? that's the typical cause of leaks

[Edited on June 25, 2008 at 9:18 AM. Reason : so i hear]

6/25/2008 9:18:26 AM

i googled it for a few mins and it seemed like a very common problem. i agree, usually i have a few tabs open and use less than 100mb

i've already uninstalled/reinstalled, removed all user data, etc

I use firefox on every computer I own/am responsible for and love it.. I really don't want to switch to IE.. that's why I came here asking for help

[Edited on June 25, 2008 at 9:20 AM. Reason : I just started it in 'safe mode' with everything disabled--still does it]

6/25/2008 9:19:54 AM

This is why I love Safari. Nothing else opens instantly when you click on the icon. FF takes forever.

6/25/2008 9:30:47 AM

hell I'll give that a shot too

[Edited on June 25, 2008 at 9:38 AM. Reason : ^I have to admit, it's fast]

6/25/2008 9:34:33 AM

Please don't use Safari.

6/25/2008 9:44:22 AM

Yeah I don't like it.. it has a quick feel to it though

think I've found the problem..will update if i did

6/25/2008 9:46:12 AM

Right now mine is running at like 300mb, but I've also had it running several days and consistently have like 10 tabs open, one running pandora, shit like that.

doesn't seem slow or anything though, just the huge use of memory. I think my plugins have something to do with it as well.

6/25/2008 10:05:04 AM

I changed some stuff in the about:config shit and it's down to under 100mb now. I have NO idea why uninstalling and removing all my user data with it didn't fix it but this did. I'll post the link if I can find it again

Taking under 80mb now and faster than I ever remember it being

[Edited on June 25, 2008 at 10:11 AM. Reason : ok back up to 115 but that's ok lol]

6/25/2008 10:10:56 AM

i've got 2 windows of ff3 with 20-30 tabs open in each, and i'm only using 110mb

i've also got 10-12 extensions installed and running

oh, and:

Quote :

"Please don't use Safari."

6/25/2008 10:14:33 AM

I'm down to 110 now.. I had a shit ton of tabs open, a few of which had some java apps running. Not sure how memory for java stuff is allocated but regardless, it seems to be fixed now

And my first impression of safari was more or less that it was pretty quick compared to IE although now that I'm back on FF and it's working properly I think FF is faster

6/25/2008 10:23:56 AM

Quote :

"some java apps running"

wouldn't be surprised at all if this was it

6/25/2008 10:25:11 AM

Quote :

"This is why I love Safari. Nothing else opens instantly when you click on the icon. FF takes forever."

When I open firefox it is pretty much instant, but I am running Ubuntu. I bought a laptop (faster than this one) the other day for a friend and was setting it up for her and firefox took a good 8 seconds to start. It has Vista.

6/25/2008 10:30:34 AM

Quote :

"i've got 2 windows of ff3 with 20-30 tabs open in each,"

why?

6/25/2008 10:33:41 AM

nah it was the first time i had been to that website.. it was for some web conferencing stuff I have to be a part of this afternoon and i wanted to make sure there weren't going to be any issues

but yea, it's fixed

Quote :

"It has Vista."

there's your problem Every laptop we've gotten with Vista has been slow as balls.. quick switch over to XP and bam they're faster.

i know vista has some advantages..but for the typical excel/outlook type shit we do, XP is better for us

[Edited on June 25, 2008 at 10:37 AM. Reason : asdf]

6/25/2008 10:36:37 AM

^ It's easier than you think!

I have eleven tabs open right now and firefox is eating up 135 mb. It's better than Firefox 2 ever was at not eating up all my system resources.

I'm going to second the notion that java could be the problem. Any time that java console has to start up to work with firefox, bad things start happening as I'm using the browser. Using vista.ncsu.edu has caused very bad things to happen sometimes (like locking up firefox and just slowly increasing the amount of memory it uses until I decide to close the program).

At least you found a way to fix it.

6/25/2008 10:38:04 AM

Safari is hands down one of the best browsers. Its easy to develop on, its fast as hell, it renders pages/graphics/fonts very very nicely. Whats not to like beside the big apple logo? That really is the only reason people hate on it.

[Edited on June 25, 2008 at 10:55 AM. Reason : .]

6/25/2008 10:55:36 AM

3 windows of IE open, only using ~16meg

6/25/2008 11:11:44 AM

^^ my beef with Safari is

a) Safari for Windows (at least the first few versions they released) sucked ass.
b) Safari for linux... doesn't exist. sure you can get safari for windows running via wine, but that's just silly.
c) Safari for Mac requires that you own a Mac. While I admit having a Mac would be pretty cool, I still don't hate my PC enough to spend that kind of money.

^ IE 7 is a huge improvement over 6, but things like Adblock and Firebug keep Firefox as my default browser

6/25/2008 11:35:41 AM

Quote :

"Safari is hands down one of the best browsers. Its easy to develop on, its fast as hell, it renders pages/graphics/fonts very very nicely. Whats not to like beside the big apple logo? That really is the only reason people hate on it."

Most people hate it because up until version 3 it was complete and utter shit. It's better now, but it's still largely more trouble than it's worth.

6/25/2008 11:35:59 AM

plus the fact that apple tried to badware it on people makes me want to avoid it even more

6/25/2008 11:39:19 AM

Quote :

"3 windows of IE open, only using ~16meg"

3 windows of IE is 90MB for me. 1 IE window with 3 tabs (1 home page 2 empty) is 40MB. wonder where the discrepancy is (between your number and mine)?

I only listed it 2 different ways on my end because I wasnt sure what you were calling 3 "windows."

[Edited on June 25, 2008 at 11:55 AM. Reason : ]

6/25/2008 11:52:12 AM

Im using IE6

[Edited on June 25, 2008 at 12:13 PM. Reason : 3 windows 1 instance]

6/25/2008 12:13:30 PM

There is no good or compelling reason to still be using IE6.

6/25/2008 12:29:26 PM

Quote :

"a) Safari for Windows (at least the first few versions they released) sucked ass. b) Safari for linux... doesn't exist. sure you can get safari for windows running via wine, but that's just silly. c) Safari for Mac requires that you own a Mac. While I admit having a Mac would be pretty cool, I still don't hate my PC enough to spend that kind of money."

I downloaded Safari for Windows not that long ago and I actually like it better than IE/FF (although the auto complete on FF3 is very nice but thats all i like about FF3)

Safari on Mac is hands down the best browser on that OS.

Everything that was wrong with Safari 2 has been corrected in Safari 3. (by everything I mean everything I didn't like about 2)

6/25/2008 12:33:47 PM

Quote :

"There is no good or compelling reason to still be using IE6."

Starting on IE6 makes just about any CSS work you're doing much easier.

Safari 3 still has some very awkward JavaScript behavior. There's also the pitfall that certain things online (such as GMail's built-in Google Talk) don't work with it.

[Edited on June 25, 2008 at 12:37 PM. Reason : .]

6/25/2008 12:36:09 PM

You can still develop for it without actually using it for your everyday browsing. But to each their own.

6/25/2008 12:40:25 PM

Safari 4 flies

[Edited on June 25, 2008 at 1:19 PM. Reason : and 3 already has some CSS3 support]

6/25/2008 1:19:10 PM

Quote :

"Safari 3 still has some very awkward JavaScript behavior. There's also the pitfall that certain things online (such as GMail's built-in Google Talk) don't work with it."

I have not run into this problem with Safari 3 (Mac). The only problem I've seen with Safari 3 and gmail was the tab label that says "Gmail - Inbox - youremail@gmail.com" changes like it should when you click on a message to the messages subject but when you click back to the inbox it remains as the message subject line instead of inbox.

And as far as JavaScript/AJAX development I've had no problems on Safari 3 and the error console is really nice...but not nearly as useful as firebug on FF.

6/25/2008 1:34:45 PM

yikes.

6/25/2008 3:37:32 PM