I think Firefox has a memory leak..

[Wayne Luke]

I haven't gotten anything over 150 so far (since upgrading to 1.5)... I recently hit 100MB a few days ago. Either way, this should be fixed asap, and I'm really surprised the Firefox team hasn't fixed this yet...

Firefox has had memory leaks since the first public technology release. I doubt it is going to be fixed any time soon.

[Floris]

1.5 and my PC never have these problems. Yes, I have 300MB in memory for a few firefox insances, but that's because they have between 15 and 75 tabs open.

It is the fastest loading browser, and renders the pages fastest, and performs great .. pages look nice and has no issues with vb 3.5.2 sites at all.

I am really happen, way more then with the 1.0 line.

[patriotcow]

Its a known bug that firefox is a firehog.. Just patch it up or get a new browser. Firefox sucks *

[MGM]

Firefox has had memory leaks since the first public technology release. I doubt it is going to be fixed any time soon.

I realize that, since version .7 I believe someone once stated? Either way, I'm starting to get worried as to why they haven't completely fixed this problem yet... surely with so many versions and fixes released they've found out where the problem lies...

MGM out

[Onimua]

I realize that, since version .7 I believe someone once stated? Either way, I'm starting to get worried as to why they haven't completely fixed this problem yet... surely with so many versions and fixes released they've found out where the problem lies...

MGM out

Unless they're turning into Microsoft.

[Kier]

Firefox has horrible memory leaks, but you can get around them by closing all your browser windows every so often, which will reset the memory usage.

[ChrisLM2001]

Which is probably a result of the right hand not knowing that the left hand is doing. One of the problems with openware development -- too many fingers in the pie (then since it's volunteers doing the fixing, folks are at the mercy of some 25 year-old programmer who'll "get to it" after his other important things are done).

Chris

[ravens-gate]

Mine does that occasionally when it decides to mess up.
Of course it has bugs, but its much better than using IE....

just get used to it, if it does it, restart firefox.

[ChrisLM2001]

Yeah, restart FF when you have 30 browser windows open -- and lose your spot in every one in the process.

That's not an improvement, that's a serious bug.

Chris

[Kier]

Yeah, it's a very nasty bug. I'm still waiting for the time when it's acknowledged as a problem by the Mozilla team.

[Colin F]

I use the SessionSaver extension to keep tabs/windows in place when restarting the browser.

[Wayne Luke]

Which is probably a result of the right hand not knowing that the left hand is doing. One of the problems with openware development -- too many fingers in the pie (then since it's volunteers doing the fixing, folks are at the mercy of some 25 year-old programmer who'll "get to it" after his other important things are done).

Chris

Firefox isn't open development. It is developed by a core group of engineers at the Mozilla Foundation. What makes it Open Source is you can download the sourcecode, modify it to fit your needs and redistribute it. Not everyone can contribute to the main development tree though.

Since the Mozilla Suite and Netscape browsers don't have the same issues, I would suggest it is flaw in the XUL implementation of Firefox and not the Gecko Engine. Especially since changing your theme or adding extensions increases the problem.

[ChrisLM2001]

Firefox isn't open development. It is developed by a core group of engineers at the Mozilla Foundation.

Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization of financial contributors and marketeers, Wayne...

http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/

Established in July, 2003, with start-up support from America Online's Netscape division, the Mozilla Foundation exists to provide organizational, legal, and financial support for the Mozilla open-source software project. The Foundation has been incorporated as a California not-for-profit corporation to ensure that the Mozilla project continues to exist beyond the participation of individual volunteers, to enable contributions of intellectual property and funds and to provide a vehicle for limiting legal exposure while participating in open-source software projects.

Chris

[Wayne Luke]

Not going to argue with your superior intellect...

http://www.mozilla.org/about/roles.html

[ChrisLM2001]

Distributed Decision-Making

http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/module-ownership.html

Mozilla.org staff is not equipped to make the volume of decisions needed for ongoing development. For one thing, it would be presumptuous to believe that the Mozilla hackers on mozilla.org staff are the experts in all areas of the code; this is most certainly not the case. For another, staff is small. The project would slow to a crawl if mozilla.org staff tried to make the majority of decisions regarding particular pieces of code.

mozilla.org Staff

http://www.mozilla.org/about/staff

Since mozilla.org is a virtual organization, there is no formal employment or authority relationship among the staff. Nevertheless, we operate with a certain sense of order, shared responsibility, consensus building, and trust. We seek a general consensus among staff, and we expect a sense of give and take. We expect staff members to state their view forcefully, but to recognize that even passionately held views will not always be adopted by the group. When consensus is difficult or an individual decision-maker is needed, we look to Brendan Eich for technical matters, and Mitchell Baker for policy and organizational matters. It would be hard to imagine staff taking technical actions to which Brendan is adamantly opposed, or policy actions to which Mitchell is adamantly opposed.

[Hmmmmm, much like IE development, huh?]

Mozilla "super-review"

http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/reviewers.html

In any case, super-reviewers have discretion to raise "design" as well as "code" red flags, and stipulate remedies, as necessary. This is necessary because mozilla.org does not require a separate design review prior to code review; instead, we expect hackers to talk about their designs, post specs or less formal blurbs about their intentions, and take feedback throughout the (usually non-linear) design/implementation process.

Chris